System 1
Measure Weekly
Prime cost from counts, split into food and labor. Theoretical versus actual food cost. Your guess, then your count.
Industry Master Playbook · Restaurants
Restaurant Master Playbook
For owners of independent restaurants, bars and cafes with a busy room and an empty bank account. Count prime cost every week, work out the prime cost your own rent and costs can afford, cost every plate in contribution dollars, check every delivery item against your real commission, and run service as a system. Every number in it is yours to count.
A Black Flag Media Master Playbook
The Prime Cost You Can Afford
Included in The Standard · $297/mo
7 systems, a working spreadsheet, 22 templates and scripts, 4 setup guides.
Seven systems. In order. Every number counted from your own invoices, shelves and timecards.
What's Inside
Prime Cost Control: 7 systems, in order
Each system passes the Trade Spine Test: a unit a restaurant actually sells, a leak you can pull from your POS, invoices or timecards this week, and a script someone says during service.
System 2
The Menu
Plate costing at usable weight. The menu matrix sorted by contribution dollars. How many orders a price change can lose. The anchor dish test.
System 3
Food Cost
The 5 leaks, spec sheets, par ordering, receiving, comps through the POS, and the pour cost math for the bar.
System 4
Labor
Forecast by day part, sales per labor hour, a written cut plan checked against local scheduling rules, hiring for hospitality, and the pre-shift script card.
System 5
Fill Seats
The discount break-even, private events with a minimum spend and a script, a wine club priced from contribution, catering math and the 30-day cash test.
System 6
Service and Guests Who Return
Service versus hospitality, standing authority with a dollar threshold, server lines, recovery words, the complaint log, guest lifetime gross profit, a talk trigger pilot and the referral ask.
System 7
Owner Rhythm
The weekly hour, the monthly review, occupancy, the cash cycle and break-even sales per open day.
Plus
Off-premise and the legal lines
Delivery contribution per item, platform pricing, direct ordering costs, cannibalisation, and a dated appendix on tips, scheduling, fees, gift cards and menus.
MASTER PLAYBOOK · restaurant-numbers-calculator.xlsx (8 working tabs), 22 templates, scripts and logs, a 13-week tracker, 4 setup guides.
THE CONTENTSWhat the book covers, in order
- Part 1. The 30-minute quick win: your weekly prime cost from counts, guess first
- Part 2. Diagnosis: why full restaurants lose money, and what you are choosing to be bad at
- Part 3. Prime Cost Control, the prime cost you can afford, the restaurant money model and the Trade Spine Test
- Parts 4 to 7. Measure Weekly, The Menu, Food Cost, Labor
- Parts 8 to 10. Fill Seats, Service and Guests Who Return, Owner Rhythm and the rest of the money
- Part 11. Off-premise and the third-party math
- Parts 12 to 17. The one-page scorecard, 4 labelled composites (1 goes wrong), metrics, 12 common mistakes, the 5-Day Count Sprint and 13 weeks, the 30 and 60-day look-back
- Part 18. Legal lines to check, dated and sourced: tip pools, service charges, overtime, predictive scheduling, menu fees, delivery fees, menus, alcohol, gift cards, marketing texts
SAMPLE · PART 1The 30-Minute Quick Win
Before you open a single invoice, write down what you think last week's prime cost was, as a share of sales. The guess is half the lesson.
Then count 3 things for the same week:
- Cost of goods used. Opening inventory plus purchases minus closing inventory. What you used, not what you bought.
- Total labor, all of it. Wages, salaried managers, your own pay, payroll taxes, workers comp, benefits.
- Sales.
WORKED EXAMPLE · 1 WEEK (HYPOTHETICAL)
Food and drink used: $11,600
Total labor: $14,900
Sales: $47,000
Prime cost = ($11,600 + $14,900) / $47,000 = 56%
Food 24.7% · Labor 31.7%
Compare it with your guess. The gap between the two tells you how far your sense of the business sits from the business. Then write 1 sentence: which half is the problem, food or labor? They have different fixes.
No target from us. Your counted number, dated, is your baseline. The book shows you how to work out the ceiling your own costs can carry.
SAMPLE · SYSTEM 2You bank dollars, not percentages
A dish that costs $3 and sells for $12 has a 25% food cost and contributes $9. A dish that costs $9 and sells for $28 has a 32% food cost and contributes $19. The "worse" food cost puts more than twice as much in your till.
The book sorts a whole menu this way, on 2 lines: how often a dish sells and how many dollars it contributes. In its worked menu, the duck has the highest food cost on the page and is tied for the most contribution per plate. An owner sorting by food cost percentage would cut it.
PRICE CHANGE BREAK-EVEN (HYPOTHETICAL)
Burger at $16, plate cost $5.50: contributes $10.50
Burger at $17: contributes $11.50
Share of orders you can lose and stay even
= 1 - 10.50 / 11.50 = about 9%
SAMPLE · PART 11The commission comes out of contribution
An $18 main with $5.40 of food in it contributes $12.60 in the dining room. On a platform at a 25% commission, with $0.90 of packaging, it contributes $18.00 - $5.40 - $4.50 - $0.90 = $7.20. That is a 43% cut to the only money that was ever yours, not 25%. Use the rate in your own contract.
The book runs that check per item, shows the platform price that would match your dining-room contribution, prices your own direct ordering channel, and checks whether delivery is bringing new guests or moving your own around.
WHAT YOU WILL NOT FINDNo borrowed benchmarks
There is no prime cost band, no food cost by cuisine, no labor percentage, no average check and no delivery share in this book. Those numbers fill trade magazines, and none of them knows your rent. You get the method that produces your own numbers, a ceiling built from your own costs, and a 30 and 60-day look-back that compares you with you.
The worked examples are labelled composites. They show decisions, never results, and 1 of them is the owner who stopped counting.
Questions
Is this for a chain?
It is written for independents with 1 to 3 locations. The math works at any size, but the legal appendix flags rules that change at larger employer sizes.
Do I need back-of-house software?
No. Everything runs on a calculator, the spreadsheet and your POS item report. The book says when software is worth paying for and what it will never do for you.
Does it tell me what my food cost should be?
No, on purpose. It shows you how to count yours weekly and how to work out the prime cost your own costs can afford.
Is the legal section legal advice?
No. It is a dated list of what to check, with the public sources we opened, and what to ask your attorney or state restaurant association.
Do This Today
Write down your guess for last week's prime cost. Then count food used, add every dollar of labor, and divide by sales. 30 minutes. Compare the 2 numbers.
Go do it. The book shows you what to do with the answer.
Read it in your library.
This is included with The Standard, along with every other guide in the library. Your monthly re-audit tells you which one to open next. $497 to start, $297/mo to keep it running. Cancel any month and keep everything.
See The Standard →Not sure yet? Take the free Bucket Audit or tell us what's broken.
Restaurant Master Playbook
Included in The Standard · $297/mo
Plug The Next Hole
Restaurant owners buy these next.
Retain Hole
Reactivation Campaign Kit
Wake up lapsed guests with the 4-Tier Wake-Up.
Included
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Delight Hole
The Delight Playbook
The Delight Ladder: keep the floor, remove the work, one thing they talk about, then the gesture. Effort test first, gestures last.
Included
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Retain Hole
Loyalty Program Design
A loyalty program priced on gross profit: the ladder, the 4 levers, the matched-comparison test and a calculator that shows when a program loses money.
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